Raymond C. Hoersch

Raymond C. Hoersch was a Bucks County mechanical engineer and a glider pilot of the United States Army Air Forces in the Second World War, the father of the Philadelphia pornographer, counterfeiter, and fugitive R.C. Horsch, who was born Raymond Charles Hoersch Jr. in 1943. He was born in Philadelphia on August 17, 1918, a son of Albert Hoersch and Helen E. Hoersch of 417 West Chew Street in the Olney section of Philadelphia, the house deeded to his grandson Eugene Horsch in 2007 and searched in the Olney House Investigation of 2026.¹²³⁴

Glider Pilot

His son said in a 2013 interview, rebroadcast in 2026, that he flew cargo gliders for the Army Air Corps and was stationed in London: large plywood aircraft, towed aloft six or eight at a time behind a DC-3, each able to carry a jeep or twelve to sixteen troops, which landed once behind enemy lines by crashing in a controlled way. "My father said generally, you pick two trees and you went between them to shear the wings off," he said, and added that his father's war stories concerned "slipping across the English Channel and smuggling back a plane load of wine." In January 1979 a notice in Luzerne County newspapers asked former World War II glider pilots living in the area to contact "State Commander Raymond Hoersch, 523 N. Main St., Chalfont."¹⁵

Bucks County

He married Clara Hagerty, a daughter of Eugene D. Hagerty and Cecilia T. Hagerty of Stroudsburg.⁶ In January 1955 a Bucks County social column reported that Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Hoersch had been entertained at a New Year's Eve party in Paoli in honor of their thirteenth wedding anniversary, and that Mr. and Mrs. Albert Hoersch of Philadelphia and Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Hagerty of Reading had been their guests.⁷⁸ His son described a childhood on a farm near Stroudsburg, a one-room schoolhouse, and a father with whom he "never, ever agreed about anything," especially about the Second World War and the Vietnam War, but who "would always stand up for me and pretty much get me out of whatever trouble I was in with the authorities."¹³

In May 1964 a firm named R. C. Hoersch & Associates, at Rural Delivery 1, Doylestown, advertised in The Philadelphia Inquirer for a mechanical design draftsman.⁹ In September 1969 Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Hoersch "of Doylestown" attended the fiftieth wedding anniversary of Clara's parents in Stroudsburg with their daughter Helen; the son's wife attended separately, listed as Mrs. Raymond Hoersch Jr., of Philadelphia.¹⁰ The following month Raymond C. Hoersch and his wife sold a property on Gayman Road in Plumstead Township for 48,000 dollars.¹¹ In July 1971, when a car he owned crashed into a tree on South York Road in Hatboro with his daughter, then Mrs. Bowers, in it, he was living at the English Village Apartments in Horsham; in September 1971 he bought a property in Chalfont from Karl R. Zuch for 36,400 dollars, and in July 1973 the Chalfont borough council approved the division of land he owned on Oak Avenue into three lots.¹²¹³¹⁴

523 North Main Street

The house at 523 North Main Street, Chalfont, was the address his son gave in December 1972 when, as "Raymond C. Hoersch, Jr.," he sued the Secretary of the Army to void his call to active duty, and in December 1974, when the United States Secret Service arrested the son for counterfeiting, officials described it as his parents' home, where he had been living recently.¹⁵¹⁶ On August 20, 1973, a Cessna 210A, registration N1437J, was registered to "Hoersch Raymond C" at that address; the registration was cancelled on July 11, 1984. On July 26, 1981, while the son was living in New Zealand under a false identity, the aircraft lost power in its initial climb from Doylestown Airport and was brought back for a wheels-up landing; the National Transportation Safety Board recorded the pilot in command as 62 years old, an engineer holding a commercial certificate, with a minor injury.¹⁷¹⁸ His son said in 2013 that while he was a fugitive FBI agents obtained his father's telephone records about once a year and traced every long-distance call, "which it never was, even though I was in pretty good contact with my father the whole time," and that the father was notified after each search, which let the son track the investigation. R.C. Horsch also said that his own son, then three, "was missing seeing his grandparents" when he decided to surrender in 1984.¹⁹ At 7:50 p.m. on November 19, 1991, walking home in dark clothing along a dimly lit stretch of Main Street near Peace Valley Road in Chalfont, he was struck by a car; borough police said he was hearing-impaired and "technically" jaywalking. He was flown by helicopter to Hahnemann University Hospital with head injuries and two broken legs and was pronounced dead at 5 a.m. on November 20, at 73. His death notice names his wife Clara, his son Raymond of Chalfont, his daughters Helen M. Mitchell of Chalfont and Virginia E. of Souderton, his sister Helen M. of Philadelphia, and four grandchildren, and asked for remembrances to Doylestown Hospital; the funeral was held at the Decker Funeral Home in Warminster, with interment at Hillside Cemetery.²⁰²¹ In June 2026 the Inquirer reported that investigators searching the Olney house had found what appeared to be urns holding remains, "one set of which was apparently his father's."²² In September police said they believed three of the five urns found in the house held the ashes of R.C. Horsch, his sister, and a friend, and that two were unidentified.²³